2024 Programmes
Witi Ihimaera
Photo by Andi Crown
Māori author Witi Ihimaera is regarded as one of the world’s leading indigenous authors. Of Te Whanau descent, with close affiliations to other Māori iwi, his work as a writer, filmmaker, teacher and renowned speaker on topics as diverse as decolonisation and the environment, spans over 50 years. His career-defining books include Tangi (1973), The Whale Rider (1986), sixteen edited anthologies of Māori literature (between 1984 and 2023), Navigating the Stars (2022) and two memoir Māori Boy and Native Son (2014) and Native Son (2019.) In 2022 he toured French Polynesia, Australia, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Canada and the USA to attend celebrations of his work including Gutenburg University’s Big Read of The Whale Rider and the showing of four Ihimaera films at Presence Autochtone, Montreal, and he was guest of honour at the IRSCL Congress on Ecologies of Childhood at UC California, Santa Barbara. He lived in Aotearoa.
![A WORSHIP OF [HONOURED] WRITERS (2021)](/Images/Assets/1446483/15/)
